There are more things in heaven and earth
by contrecoup
Summary: A collection of ramblings from the King of Swing himself, Dean Domino. He did have an awful lot of time to think, after all - about his past, the Madre, the bombs... Most of it set before the Dead Money takes place.
1. Something's gotta give

These are all just a collection of musings and rants of what I think went in in the head of Dean Domino during his 200 year stint at the Madre. Most of these will just consist of him muttering to himself, but I might eventually do some of when he first meets the Dead Money cast, and probably a few set before the war.

The Sierra Madre, as much a part of him now as anything else. Even the ghosts of Vera and Sinclair still kept him company, the scenery growing old and rotting with him while they stayed preserved. Infuriating at first, but somewhere along the line it'd become comforting. His own little tarnished version of the world that the bombs never touched.

Still too lonely for his tastes though, he thought and wrinkled his nose. He craved an audience, anyone really; even the blasted mist that seeped into his cigarette smoke couldn't dampen that need to entertain.

Dean Domino – nearly as much a ghost as the rest of them.

The thin line distinguishing him from the ghost people was a balcony view and the use of his faculties.

His mind would be next, he'd muse on occasion, typically after half a bottle of scotch reminded him that the world even existed outside his precious Madre.

His Madre. He owned it now more than Sinclair ever did, that cheap bastard still haunting him even in death.

And Vera too, his Vera...he'd laid the groundwork for that girl before Sinclair was ever in the picture, before he'd even had a chance to traipse his eyes all over her fake, pin-up Hollywood body. He'd set up the players, he'd planned the heist, he'd been clever enough to pull the wool over the eyes of that arrogant prick.

Thought his rink-dinky hole of a casino could eclipse Dean Domino? His name was in _lights_, goddamn it, all over the world!

Well who's laughing now! He heard his own voice respond, drunken syllables, barely pronounced, echoed back off the rotting alleyway.

Who's laughing now? He repeated, quieter this time.

Luckily these moments were infrequent; it only took but a moment for his tenacity and good-wit to chase off any pessimism that found a way inside his head. Alcohol helped a great deal as well.

But since no one was looking, not like there'd ever been anyone to look anyway, he let the feeling linger.

It tasted bitter.

Sometimes he'd let his mind wander outside the Madre, far beyond the ruined walls of his self-inflicted prison cell of a city. The whole world was still there - it had to be. Flames had cleansed the surface but society remained intact somehow. He'd seen glimpses of it caught in traps and fitted with collars, forced by some twisted fate to return and scurry around his city.

Tourists, he spat. People.

Contempt held against them simply because the alternative threatened to break what he had left.

They'd die, bickering and cursing, just like the others.

No point, really, in getting attached.

Not like it'd been any different before the bombs.

At least then he had better entertainment. A whole flock of celebrities to putter about and regale, fueling his ego as they scarcely knew.

Now, left alone, he surprised himself in reaching out. Or at least wanting to, anyway. Each time he'd talk himself out of the silly delusion of course.

If he let himself stray from his obsession...well, frankly, he was afraid what he'd see.

200 years of wasting away and all of it incredibly pointless, positively certifiable if he didn't succeed in getting into that damn vault.

No, no he'd wait. Wait for them to come to you, Dean, he'd calm himself. The only way you're getting in that vault is with a clear head on your shoulders.

The idea that he might be going mad struck him every odd hour.

A silly concept, he'd realize and shake it away. But appallingly haunting in it's implications.

No, the heist was still proceeding entirely as planned - a few delays in it's implication, surely, but every great plan has its hiccups, right? It was only the results that mattered in these situations.

Only the results, he'd assure himself, staring down at the city...

and nothing else.


	2. Name in Lights

Disclaimer: Bethesda and Obsidian own everything Fallout. I'm just a silly person obsessed with fictional characters :)

This is all pretty much just my headcanon for Dean. It's a flashback type thing I guess (I'm just realizing it's in present tense...) so...yeah. Just him muttering to himself and being a big manchild.

* * *

He had dirt on every one of them, all right, every last actor and actress he'd ever shared a stage with, ever done a show or a flick with, hell - practiced lines together, _anything_. He had them all stacked up like bottles at a carnival booth, ready to take them out if he ever chanced upon their calloused words.

And sometimes before, if he felt it was necessary. He'd learned early on in his career to trust your gut if it spoke to you, and when his was tap dancing around inside him, warning sirens shouting up with the words "Danger" in big neon lights, well, he sure as hell wasn't about to ignore it.

Preemptive strike, just to be careful really, he'd tell himself.

Every one in Hollywood is guilty of something. Now _there _was a justification_. _A golden truth, a _safe_ truth, one you could bet your conscious on. Isn't doing anyone an _injustice_ – God, he hated the word! - to knock 'em down a few pegs if they've already screwed half the schmucks in the business.

And in _this_ business, that's all you needed, really, to plop your career in the shitter; one slip-up, one alleyway indiscretion, and you'd be sentenced to a lifetime of – Christ - _TV_ appearances and _guest hosting_ at some god awful beauty pageant in the ass end of Mississippi.

There were worse things than being forgotten. Much, much worse.

And he had his little finger waiting on the button to set it all off.

Why all the precaution?

Well, he had to secure the upper hand, didn't he? Make sure others never found out about his own slip-ups and occasional lapses in judgment, and what better way to do that than by setting up the first strike? Especially if anyone should ever choose to dip into the particulars of his past. Not that that was easy, mind you, with how well he destroyed the records. Might as well have dropped an atomic bomb on the subject for all that was left.

A secret others would consider inconsequential, certainly not as dire a subject as he made it out to be, but then again they weren't the ones forced to keep it, now were they? Knowing there was something that separated them from the others, an invisible wedge that seethed under their skin and left the sickening taste of salt on their tongue. Unspoken connotations ringing, guessing at hidden messages, wondering how far their words truly went or if, in his stammering paranoia, he just imagined that glint in the corner of their eyes when they recognized him from across the room. Were those whispers he just barely caught, was that his name he heard? How much did they know and was he too late, too maddeningly far behind the trail of speculation to halt it before it reached anything veritable.

It was his past that haunted him. His debilitatingly average past.

No sob story to catch the public's ear, no battles fought in the face of adversity; no – just average, Savannah bred parents raising an average, public school, car pooling, goddamn white bread cul-de-sac son!

It wasn't perfect, but even the minor roads bumps in his childhood failed to make an impact - the occasional bickering between his parents loud enough to bring questioning neighbors knocking, the pocket money he'd steal from the other cul-de-sac kids so he could afford to hang out with them come Friday nights (even _that _wasn't out of necessity; his parents stopped providing him money whenever he cut class to sneak down to the theater, or, when he got a bit older, dropped in on drama classes at the local excuse for a college). These adolescent trials, while bothersome, failed to give him the same strength as, say, an orphan on the streets of Brooklyn. Fighting for their next meal, determined to survive even facing the insurmountable odds against them. Now there's a life that would have prepared him for showbiz! He'd _dream_ to have a history so colored with misfortune; he'd have grown from it, shaped into an impeccable amalgam of brains and brawn, a strong character stemmed with modesty and self-assurance. He'd of had the world begging for him.

But no, no he had to be born _middle class_. Practically a death sentence to his character. And even when he'd finally gotten a break, convinced his folks to let him move out to Hollywood with his Gran (she'd profited enough from his Grandad's death to more than tide the two of them over) it was hardly any different on the other side of the states. He'd see the starving actors littering the streets, you'd practically trip of them any place you went, and the jealousy would just be ripe within him. He was seething at their good fortune, the damn idiots had no _idea_ what cards they possessed.

With his misfortune, he ended up working _for _the stars in the beginning, not _with _them. It was humiliating. Delivering coffee and snacks and anything else their little prepped up mugs desired, all at the drop of a hat. And even when he'd finished every last god awful triviality demanded of him, not one had a moment to look at his resume, all their precious time vanished, evaporated into the blasted sky whenever he needed a word in. They treated him trash, like a second-class citizen, like a goddamn _chinamen_.

So he secured his first part using the only language these "stars" seemed to understand: bribery. Lying. Blackmail. These people hadn't an ounce of humanity, but they did have _reputations_, and none could withstand his tenacity, the persistence of a man who hasn't a mind for costs so long as results are cinched by the time he lay his head down at the end of the day. Slept like a baby every night, he might add - no guilt for miles.

Guilt was an impediment to people who wanted results, he found. It was an excuse for laziness, the terribly "holier than thou" lazy.

He was more than happy to take down their ilk.

And every sidewards glance, every whisper from the stars who shared his spotlight now stopped his heart, drudged up the one question never far from his mind: _how much do they know_?

It wasn't just a lump in his throat, it was a goddamn boulder crushing the life out of him with its weight, pushing down down down on his mind when the suspicion, winding in circles, chased his coherent thoughts to the winds.

And so, possessed with singular purpose, the world and its entirety freezing around the periphery of his target, not to be bothered with, at least not at this moment - with this tunnel vision he would pursue. He'd find out what knowledge they possessed and destroy them regardless of the answer.

Two hundred years in the Madre couldn't crush his persistence.

Nothing on this earth could.

Reputation. That was all he had left. That was all he ever had, bombs or no, and he wasn't leaving until the world

knew

his

name.


	3. Sinclair's Lovely Parting Gift

Why was it that he wasn't scuffing the floor with all those other high-society types that night? Why wasn't he amongst their numbers, their heads and wallets light from the stupors of their intoxication.

A present...that was it. That was the piece that'd tore him away. The memory was hidden back their somewhere, he scratched at his head to dislodge it. Something Sinclair had said, before everything...when they'd been chatting it up a couple of hours before the curtain.

A famous wine of some sort. No, no he never could stand wine...sherry it was. Sinclair had heard from the grape vine that he had quite a taste for it. Wrapped him up a bottle from god knows where in his many excursions to Europe.

Amontillado was the name of it. A chilled bottle on his dresser, delivered to his room with a card.

"To new beginnings. To old friends."

The sentiment was poisonous.

He'd slid the bottle straight into the trash. By some miracle, it didn't break, just sat there, staring up at him. Cushioned by page after page of torn sheet music, fan mail, ghastly hallmark cards – the like.

He was irked it didn't shatter. It left him without closure to his outrage.

Well this was some kind of godawful pathetic joke. It had to be. Everything screamed of it.

That damn Sinclair always taking every other step on his heels.

"Good luck tonight"? PAH – more like "Here's to hoping you choke in front of the limelight, you bastard."

Show business types didn't indulge in the pathetic party favors and niceties of your average associates. Not unless they wanted something out of it.

He checked his watch. Still an hour till the show started. He began to traipse around the room, annoyance prickling beneath his skin and stirring his movements on.

That pompous ass made him walk all the way to his apartment, clear on the other side of the madre, and all for what? For some dime-store sherry? For some party gift he'd bet his blazer the bastard bought him at the last minute?

No, it was clear – he'd wanted him out of the way.

There'd been three in the room before he left, including himself. Now there were two.

Dean made himself comfortable on the couch, plucking out a cigarette.

Sinclair and Vera...

Ahh, now THERE'S the ticket. His lighter flicked open.

He took his time breathing it in. That Sinclair was a sly old bugger, he had to admit. That move itself's worthy of the Dean Domino repertoire.

No doubt he stole it from him, he grunted.

I mean, he supposed it worked in his favor. Vera could do her work without any..._distractions_ around her. He gave a sly smile. No, no unnecessarily placed gentlemen in expensive suits (not unlike his own) would certainly only befuddle the situation.

He shifted in his seat, tapping his foot in the air. Let that Sinclair get in all the sweet words he can. Because after tonight...

_After tonight_- the words dropped down like succulent honey. He took a deep whiff of his cigarette.

The well-laid plans of man had such a lovely ring to them in their final verses. Made everything smell like expensive leather and fruit simmering out in the trees, ready to be plucked. His arms held this constant sensation of being stretched out towards his prize, almost touching it, even now as he sat far above and away from the vault.

Odd how he could feel so close to his goal and so disconnected from it's particulars all at once, he sniffed. He slid his finger down towards the radio dial. Those blasted nerves of his were whirring up a storm with the anticipation. It'd do him no good to start out the show giddy as a school boy. Static, static, c'mon now where was the news? BBC, NPR, it didn't matter. He just needed the sound of monotone syllables to dull himself, get his heart rate down.

It shouldn't be this damn hard to get reception, he cursed, jerking the knob through each station.

Finally. He stopped. The newscaster's voice came through in blips, sparks of syntax, barely coherent but definitely shaking. He was stammering on as if the station would cut out on him at any second, something about...bombs? Blast it! Damn thing went out again...

Bombs...the Chinese had dropped bombs? Was that what he'd said?

He gagged on his cigarette.

Oh Christ – he didn't mean...THE Chinese? THE bombs?

He retched up the volume but the words were lost, collapsed under the sound of what felt like the entire town shaking.

One of the table legs shook out of it's socket, the shingles slipped off the roof, cracking like icicles when they smacked the ground. He ran to the window, stumbling, clutching the pane with white fingers.

Lights. His million dollar view wasn't there anymore – it'd all turned into flashbulbs going off in his face.

The show's starting, he thought. He must have gone crazy for a moment- those were the only words his mind seemed to be able to piece together.

He blinked the tears away but they fell down his face instead.

When the blinding curtain faded, he could finally see where they'd landed. Not on the villa itself, no not even close. A few hundred miles in front of the gate by the looks of it. Closer to Vegas...

Good god, but that light! The bomb might have landed just outside his window. And the heat – like the fair winds he remembered back in Wisconsin growing up, lapping, beating dry so that he quick slid the window close. The glass already felt hot to his touch.

He stumbled back towards his couch, almost tripping over the collapsed table.

No more lights were popping up. That was...that was good, wasn't it?

His heart was practically beating out of his chest, but he couldn't find his feet to move. Everything felt impossibly outside his touch, stifled and hidden by the eerie quiet he found himself with. Like a massive pause had been dumped all around.

_The radio_, the thought sprang up as if it weren't even his.

He tripped over himself to reach it, and practically ripped the knob from it's circuits.

Nothing. Not even static.

How bad did things have to be if there wasn't even static? He didn't even want to think...

Huddling now over his armoire, his knuckles shaking and digging into the wood, threatening to let him collapse, he thought he might be sick. It was that heaving in his chest, working it's way up through his throat. More tears, was it? God he didn't even know. His body wasn't his own anymore- it'd dissolved in the lights. He'd lost everything to the lights.

What was that beside the armoire? His eyes wandered. The sherry bottle stared up at him. Still un-broken. Still sitting in the trash.

Moving outside himself, he picked it up, grabbed a glass from his dresser, and sat down to pour himself a drink. Since the table was out of operation, he measured it out in his hands, pouring slowly, thoughtfully.

The Amontillado watched with him as another light devoured the horizon. He tightened his grip so that it wouldn't spill over.

He downed it without looking. Barely breathing. He was already filling it up for another drought when he heard the screams start from below. They were coming from the direction of the casino.

And unlike the lights, they didn't show any signs of stopping.


	4. So much for the Portrait of Dorian Grey

That poster had no right to last longer than him. For that matter, neither did his sunglasses...

His glare extended through the glass, past the graffiti (some chap with a big nose named Killroy had apparently been here) and honed in on the what-had-been-his-face just'a smiling away at him before it had fallen off in one of the fountains back in the Residential District.

He'd forgotten what his smile looked like; his face _definitely_ had not been smiling staring up at him from amongst the ancient chewing gum and penny coins congealing at the bottom of the fountain.

Had that really been his skin tone? Hmmm...darker than he remembered. Cut more of a 'Temptations' vibe than he'd thought. And here he'd always figured himself as a dead ringer for Bing Crosby.

His past always had that obnoxious 'sneaking up behind you when you weren't paying attention' quality about it. Forever out to spite him, clawing to catch at his boots with the heels falling off. 'Wonder glue works on any surface!' - apparently the advertisers didn't intend the words 'any surface' to apply to 100% authentic Savannah alligator skin.

Had to toss them in the desert – in the _desert! _- to replace with some dusty, dirt-ridden shoes he'd stolen off a carefully selected drinking partner. The sod hadn't on him but a twenty caps (a petty sum apparently, or so he'd learned), a revolver, and Dean Domino's less-than-brand new walking shoes.

Oh, and a blazer – though the damn thing had been stolen the minute he walked into Freeside. They'd hit him over the head and made quick work of most of valuables; would have killed him too, if he hadn't gotten hold of his gun and let out a shot into the air. They scattered like notes at the end of one of Carl Walker's infamous, er, "jazz" solos.

So now he had to trudge around the desert in a brown blazer with black pants. Good lord, if only the paparazzi could see him now...

Oh but wait – they were all dead.

Shame. But then again, no not _really_.

Lucky that Mitt fellow over at the pea shooter emporium spoke his language: the civilized language of bribery. The whole 'sneaking into Vegas' plan hadn't gone so well...turns out those robots of House's had perfect 20/20 vision, even in the night, and by vision of course he meant targeting equipment. Good thing he'd convinced that junkie to try it first (ahhh yes...drugs had survived the bombs, just as he'd hoped), otherwise he'd have ended up Dean Domino – world famous entertainer and, coincidentally, that pile of dust underneath your left shoe.

Once actually in Vegas, it was only a matter of time. His voice, while somewhat spoiled with age and radiation, no less drowned out the existing talent and sealed the deal for Mr. Torino.

They even touched up those old signs of his. Dean Domino – the king of swing, and, painted slightly below it in sloppy letters – now playing live at the Tops Casino!

Most came to see the spectacle. A ghoul, over two hundred years old, singing on stage? He got a lot of jeers his first act.

Not entirely unlike his very first few performances, honestly. Some gangly little shit stepping up to the spotlights, doing his best attempt to wrestle the notes and pitches of the greats into the range of his nasily Tennessee accent.

No, no, it hadn't been _that _bad. But he did have an accent. Learned to lose that bloody thing in a Peloponnesian minute.

Now the only difference was he had the ability to shut them up once they quieted down from their alcohol-induced frenzy and catcalls and broken beer bottles to actually let the music hammer its way through their neanderthal skulls.

Well, that and a few hundred years. Er, give or take.

And yet they didn't have the money to invest in some damn new advertising. No~, still using these same god awful black and white posters he hadn't manage to shake off when the photographer was still _living_.

He pouted, and grumbled in a voice low enough so that any of the passing NCR louts and gambling addicts were only able to make out part of what he said.

"...'s not even that good a picture..."


End file.
